


Upgrade

by juper



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Eye Trauma, Gen, Medical Procedures, Mild Gore, Ul'dah is a shady place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 15:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20491142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juper/pseuds/juper
Summary: Jancre got sick of being half-blind. Luckily, he has connections to people who can fix that for him, in one way or another.





	Upgrade

**Author's Note:**

> second work posted hoo boy! lots of mentions/references to medical stuff and slight gore, so if you're squeamish pls do not read :(

On most days, he would have avoided the alleys and dark corners of Ul'dah. While they were often suitable places for folk like him to hide from soldiers and overly curious citizens, it was unwise to idly pass through them or, worse, linger in them. That day, though, happened to be a very special day for Jancre. He only glanced about the alleyway while he walked down it as a precaution, not out of any true suspicion that he might be set upon. He knew where he was going… mostly.

Only a little nervous, but definitely uncomfortable, he paused at a particular doorway, set into the wall in such a way that it didn't stick outwards at all. Unless you were already close enough to see the door itself, it was practically invisible from either end of the alley. Jancre took only a quick moment to look at the note he'd been holding- yes, this was the right place- before leaning down to knock with the back of his hand. He was by no means tall for an elezen, yet the door was short enough that he'd have to duck to enter the building. Most likely the residence was built with miqo'te or lalafell in mind, he figured.

Before he could ponder it any further, he was alerted by the sound of a bolt sliding out of place that the door had been unlocked. It creaked faintly as he swung it open, needing to duck to fit under the frame as he'd thought. He heard the lalafell jogging over to him before he saw them, a small hand pulling him by the sleeve to walk further into the building. Jancre could barely register their words, preoccupied with looking around the cramped space. It looked like a workshop of sorts, definitely not a living area, though it wasn't lacking for inhabitants. A great many miqo'te were hard at work; engineers, it seemed, by their thick gloves and goggles, and the tools they worked with. A steady electrical hum rang through the walls, and Jancre wondered briefly why he'd not heard it from outside, before the lalafell dragged him past a curtain and he could see the rush of activity no more.

"Customer, you two! Get to it!" Jancre's tiny guide snapped at the others in this much smaller, yet considerably less crowded room, before darting back through the curtain again to shout orders at someone else. Odd, he thought again, that the ruckus was so much quieter when you weren't in the room itself.  
"As if we were lounging about in here!" One of the two others in the room sighed, shaking his head as Jancre turned to look at him. A hyur, average and unremarkable for the most part, he stood out to Jancre immediately for his heavily scarred arms, both of which ended in metallic prosthetics. He removed the gloves he'd been wearing and held a hand out to greet the Duskwight. "Name's Harric. I'll be working with my… colleague, here, to help you out. Give us your name, just for the record?" 

Jancre shook the metal hand, which wasn't nearly as cold as he'd expected, and nodded, looking over at the only other person in the room- though his back was turned, he was clearly an elezen.  
"Jancre Dronant," He replied somewhat cautiously, not entirely comfortable with the strange place, still. "You will be… replacing my eye, yes? This is the first I have been involved in such a procedure."  
The elezen turned at that moment, and Jancre was half expecting them to frown or generally look disapproving of him; he was a Wildwood, known for their distrust of Duskwights. Yet, the stranger only gave a warm smile and offered his own hand for Jancre to shake. "Gliraut. Relax, you are in good hands. We have everything prepared for you here." He shook Jancre's hand and immediately turned again, apparently very busy despite his statement.

"Right, Gliraut here will be doing most of the legwork today. Since your eye is still intact as far as the… connections and everything," Harric gestured as he spoke, prosthetic hands moving fluidly, as though he had been born with them. "We need to be really careful with what we take out. Gliraut is the best surgeon I know. He'll get everything perfect for a new eye to hook up to your head just right, and then you can see again, no problem." He brought Jancre over to an operating table, though it was covered in fabric, presumably so he wouldn't be lying down on cold metal.  
"Jancre," Gliraut called over, having put on gloves and pinned his long hair back. "We can have you fully unconscious for the entire procedure, if you would like. In truth, though, we need only have you temporarily numb around your eye. Which would you prefer?" He waited patiently for a response, but Jancre needed only a few seconds to decide.  
"Numb," He said, lying back on the table. "I would not trust even my closest friends to put a knife to me while asleep."

The Wildwood strapped Jancre's head to the table, but left him otherwise free to move, a great comfort to the Duskwight. He was given some kind of elixir, as well as a numbing mixture applied to his face, and it wasn't long before he found himself drowsy, vision wobbling, with the other elezen leaning over him with a very sharp knife. Gliraut was as quick and precise as he'd promised. Jancre could feel and see nothing from his right eye, but he could watch with his left eye as the knife cut into him. It was unnerving to be awake for the whole procedure, but considerably less scary than he'd thought it would be. The eye was useless to him either way, and the lack of pain made it easy to relax into what, to his currently addled mind, seemed like surprisingly soft cloth under him.

After some time, he felt an odd tugging sensation from somewhere in his head. Dimly, he realised he could feel what little of his eye remained being pulled out of the socket; it made him feel nauseous, knowing he was feeling the nerves of his eye being moved around in his skull, but he gritted his teeth and let the surgeon continue. As quick as ever, Gliraut had pinched off those nerves and removed the rest of the eye.  
"Can I… keep it?" Jancre asked, quietly, speech slurred. The Wildwood blinked once, confused, before laughing.   
"The eye? 'Tis in pieces, but… well, let us see when you are more recovered." He shrugged, moving some things around on the tray next to him. It was Harric's turn, then, to get to work, holding up a metallic ball so Jancre could see it with his left eye. Parts of it looked to him as though they were Allagan design, and he frowned; surely these two would not be working here if they had knowledge of the workings of Allagan technology? Harric seemed to pick up on his concern and rotated the ball in his hand.  
"It's mostly magitek, but there's a good deal of it that's based on our own designs, uses aether and all that. Magic's my specialty!" The hyur beamed, moving around to Jancre's right side. "Makes it easy to use when you can kinda… make it a part of you. Like a skin graft or something like that, except, you know, metal." He seemed confident enough, and the apparent ease with which he moved his own prosthetic limbs was reassuring, if nothing else. Jancre simply grunted, waiting for the procedure to continue. At first, he thought nothing was happening, but the return of that jarring tug inside his skull told him the man was, in fact, connecting his nerves to the odd ball. Another slight wave of nausea washed over him when he thought of those nerves being outside of his eye socket, but it passed quickly enough, and the strangely soothing noise of Harric's fingers clacking against the eye's material stopped. Quickly, almost suddenly, the hyur was pressing the ball into his socket, which made an awful (as far as Jancre was concerned, and he certainly heard it the most clearly) pop noise as it squeezed into the socket.

Harric spent the better part of a quarter bell checking and double-checking the placement of the eye, ensuring it was able to move just as the original would have, before channelling aether through it. By then, most of the numbness had worn off for Jancre, and the eye felt nothing but heavy. He was beginning to sincerely worry it would fall out whenever he tipped his head down, and he was all too aware of the strange material against his flesh.  
"That's gonna feel real weird for about half a bell," The hyur said, looking at the eye through magnifying tools and what Jancre could only assume was a sort of measuring device, as well as finally undoing the strap holding his head still. "Lie down for a bit, let me know if it hurts- it shouldn't, probably won't, but let me know."  
With that, he and the other elezen returned to cleaning and sorting equipment, leaving Jancre to blink and squint while his new eye slowly but surely began to filter the light. It still felt uncomfortably heavy, but the discomfort was fading the more his own aether coursed through him. Being a mage, particularly one so specialised in aether, he could tell the tiny ball was actually drawing on his aether somewhat, but the amount was so miniscule it didn't even compare to the weakest of thaumaturgy. His natural reserve of aether replenished itself as quickly as the eye drew on it, and he was hardly ever going to be running out anytime soon. Still, he knew that if it continued to draw on aether in such a way, it might interfere with his projects; he dismissed that as a worry for another time.

Before a full bell had passed, Gliraut handed Jancre a small jar, filled with a liquid so thick it was almost a gel. Suspended in the fluid was Jancre's old eye, the pieces positioned close enough together that the eye looked almost whole.  
"That is, I must say, the first time we have had a request to keep an old part." The Wildwood chuckled, patting Jancre's shoulder gently. "'Twill certainly make for quite the conversation piece!"  
Harric, meanwhile, came over to look into Jancre’s new eye once more, before nodding and handing him a small roll of bandages. “You wanna keep a patch or bandages over that for a while until you get used to it,” He said, patting the elezen on the shoulder. “And uh, try not to use the aethernet for a while. I dunno whether it’ll affect the eye before it’s fully settled in, so let’s just not find out, okay?”  
Jancre grunted in response, slowly getting up from the table, a little unsteady on his feet from whatever concoction they’d used to sedate him. The hyur called in the lalafell that had showed him through the building earlier, and they dragged him by the sleeve back through the workshop- somehow, it was even busier since he last saw it, a few dozen more engineers working on a larger project in the middle of the room.  
“Mind yourself! It’s bright out there and dark in here.” The lalafell gave Jancre a cheery wave before walking quickly back to another part of the building, shouting as they went. He wrapped the bandages he was holding around his head before he left, just covering his new eye, and ducked out into the alley once more.

Immediately, he was glad for the warning, as the midday Thanalan sun was present even in those normally shaded alleyways. Cursing under his breath, he blinked rapidly until his eye adjusted to the light, and made his way back to the airship landing, stumbling as he went. By the time he returned to Limsa Lominsa, he had mostly recovered from the day’s ordeal, but he still didn’t trust himself to get home safely on his own. His chocobo, luckily, was trained to know the safe route from the city to his home, and the ride was blissfully short and smooth. The journey barely registered in his still drowsy mind, and before he knew it he was slumped in his chair, in front of his fireplace at home, his new eye idly drawing on his aether as he adjusted to it. It would be some time yet before he could properly use it, but he was glad to at last be rid of his partial blindness.


End file.
